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Breezes From 

The Southland 

By 

JOSIE S. MAYES 



BROADWAY PUBLISHING CO. 
835 Broadway, N. Y. 






T $lS» r 

;<l4 


Copyright, 1909, 
Aa 

JOSIE S. MAYES. 


24835 5.,' 


CONTENTS. 


Legend of the Snow Sprites .... 5 

Social Reform.18 

Random Thoughts on “The Science of Study” . 26 
The Teacher and Her Perplexities . . -35 

Grammar of Life.44 

Homer More Practical Than Heroditus . . 49 

Optimisms of Emerson in Contrast with the 
Pessimistic Views of Carlyle . . . -55 

Facts and Fancies About Egypt . . . .60 

Drawing.66 

Something About Spelling.71 

The Civic Value of Birds.76 







V 



Breezes from the Southland 


LEGEND OF THE SNOW SPRITES. 

Once upon a time all the bright, sparkling 
little Snow Fairies began clamoring for a visit 
to the warm “Southland.” “Do, Father 
Borious,” they all cried, “do take us with you 
on your next trip to the orange groves and 
rose gardens of the South. The great yel¬ 
low oranges are so beautiful, and we long to 
change them into balls of solid gold, and to 
touch the beautiful flowers with our magic 
wands and turn them into frozen gems.” 
“And wouldn’t it be grand,” chimed in fair 
little Vanity, “to creep into their scented pet¬ 
als, and there, mirrored in their rainbow hues, 
see ourselves all dressed in beautiful colors 
like the witching little Meadow Fairies?” 
“Yes! Yes!” they all cried. “That would be 
charming; our white robes are very beautiful, 
and we love to wear them, but we do so much 
want to go masquerading just once! Now, 
do be a good old Father Borious and take us 
5 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

with you the next time King HIneus calls you 
South.” 

“Oh! you foolish children,” replied old Bo- 
rious in as soft a tone as that blustering old 
personage could assume. “Why can’t you be 
content to remain in your Ice palaces, where 
you can sparkle and dance all winter long, and 
where no evil can possibly come near you? 
Don’t you know the Heat Fairies of the trop¬ 
ics do not love little Snow Sprites? While in 
the main they are very good, and very beau¬ 
tiful, yet they are a hot-headed little people, 
and do many things that Snow Fairies would 
consider a burning shame. They all agree that 
you are cold and unfeeling, and it would be 
just like them, when they hear of your pro¬ 
posed visit, to call a convention, and draw 
up a set of resolutions to the effect that all 
my vast family of Snow Children would be 
much improved by a little warming up. And 
having a vast amount of surplus energy, they 
would next begin to seek out ways and means 
for putting these resolutions into effect. Then, 
too, they are very proud of their orange 
groves and flower gardens, and guard them 
very jealously; this in itself would g'ive new 
zest to a determined opposition, knowing, as 
they do, that you have a naughty trick of 
biting quantities of fruit that you can’t con¬ 
sume. They admit that your touch makes the 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

flowers very beautiful for the time, but it 
leaves them stiff and odorless, and they soon 
wither and fall from the stems. Upon the 
whole, I fear this visit is not wisely planned. 
But if nothing else will satisfy, I suppose I 
shall have to take you with me on my next 
run to the Land of Flowers.” On this all the 
Snow Fairies clapped their frozen little hands, 
held up, in triumph, their sparkling ice fin¬ 
gers, and, if possible, danced about more 
gayly than ever before. “Oh!” they all cried, 
in their tinkling little voices. “We are going 
to the Southland, to the land of the rose and 
orange, to the fair, green land of the Heat 
Fairies!” But these tiny enthusiasts little 
reckoned the warm reception that awaited 
them. For no sooner was the news of their 
coming flashed from the frozen regions of the 
North to the sunny land of the Tropics than 
the South Wind began to rally his forces. 
He blew softly on his little reed trumpets, and 
the Heat Fairies, hearing the call, began to 
assemble in all their dazzling beauty. The 
South Wind told them briefly of the prospect¬ 
ive visit of the Snow Fairies. Then added 
that as Jack Frost had long been their tutor, 
he feared the little rogues were not altogether 
on pleasure bent, and that there lurked in 
their brilliant little brains many a wicked plot 
“Well, we will just see about that!” exclaimed 
7 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

a chorus of small voices, and their breath’ 
came hot and fast. “Now, there is no imme¬ 
diate cause for alarm,” said their leader softly. 
“Keep as cool as your hot little heads will per¬ 
mit. But in the meantime we must adopt 
some prompt and decisive measure, as to the 
best way to repulse them.” Excitement ran 
riot, but so prompt were these enthusiastic 
little creatures that they were reassembled in 
an incredibly short time. Not in uniform, how¬ 
ever, for each little fairy was arrayed in the 
color that he or she liked best, and each bore 
a satcheL of “Triple extract of Tropical 
odors.” Just then the South Wind came 
round a curve of the mountain. Loud and 
long were the cheers that greeted him. “Hoist 
your banner, General Wind!” shouted a chorus 
of small voices, “and we will follow. And a 
more resolute band you have never led. As 
you see, we are all well armed;” and they 
held up their quaint little pouches, filled with 
the warm breath of tropical flowers, exclaim¬ 
ing exultingly: “The Snow Sprite who can 
live in the atmosphere wherein these odors are 
wafted is quite a hardy little Sprite indeed.” 
And they again examined the cobweb cord 
with which each little pouch was securely tied 
to see that there was no fear of its contents 
escaping before it should be needed. In ad¬ 
dition to this, each little fairy had taken the 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


wise precaution to arm himself with a keen 
little blade, commonly known as a sunbeam. 
All was now ready, and at the word of com¬ 
mand, off they started on their North-bound 
flight. And a sight more dazzlingly beautiful 
was never before witnessed. In the meantime, 
a lively band of Snow Sprites, led by Old 
Borious, was hurrying Southward. And just 
as the Heat Fairies reached the Florida coast, 
who should they see coming but this bluster¬ 
ing old Norseman and his dazzling white 
company. “Oh! how beautiful they are!” ex¬ 
claimed the Heat Fairies. “They must be 
celestial beings. Surely these pure little crea¬ 
tures could never entertain any thought of 
evil, they look so white and innocent.” “Just 
wait,” the South Wind whispered softly, 
“wait and watch their pranks for a while. As 
this is their first visit South, we must let them 
enjoy themselves in their own way, so long 
as it seems to bode no evil. But hold your¬ 
selves in readiness, and at the first sign of their 
beginning their work of destruction, by our 
combined efforts we will no doubt be able to 
rout them and hurl them back to their frozen 
palaces, ‘where the North stretches over the 
empty space.' ” So the Heat Fairies concealed 
themselves, and from their hiding places 
watched with growing interest the ecstatic de¬ 
light of the Snow Fairies, who were heard to 
9 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND. 


exclaim: “Oh! how beautiful! We never 
dreamed of anything so beautiful!” And they 
again clapped their icy little hands and danced 
for joy. “Oh! what shall we do first?” cried 
a chorus of small voices. But their indecision 
was but momentary; and, actuated by as great 
a diversity of motives as characterize the real 
sons apd daughters of Adam, each began to 
busy himself according to his peculiar bent of 
mind; vanity, greed, commercial interest, the 
colonizational spirit, and the spirit to do 
things in an aimless way for pure destructive¬ 
ness. One little Sprite nestled in the heart of 
a damask rose. “See,” she cried to her com¬ 
panions, “I am a Snow Queen! And did any 
queen who ever wore a crown ever rejoice in 
tapestry as rich as mine?” And she seated 
herself on a golden stamen that served right 
well for a throne, while a dewdrop mirrored 
the scarlet beauty of her royal robes. While 
another less pretentious little flake laughed 
with delight to see her tiny form mirrored 
in the blue depth of a violet, others played 
hide and seek among the varicolored flowers, 
while the tints of their robes, like a kaleido¬ 
scope, changed at each consecutive evolution, 
to be pronounced by the wearer as more beau¬ 
tiful than before. While others still, with a 
more practical turn of mind, in spite of “The 
Monroe Doctrine,” by late interpretation, 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


“Keep off the Grass/’ had planted a colony- 
on a great yellow orange. Yes, these wee 
folks had forgotten their history, forgotten 
their geography, in fact, had forgotten every¬ 
thing in the delightful consciousness that they 
were for the time denizens of a great golden 
globe which they considered their very own, 
by the law of nations—“The Right of Discov¬ 
ery.” “And was there ever a world so beau¬ 
tiful!” they exclaimed. “Surely we must be 
translated fairies, and these are the ‘Golden 
Streets’ of which we’ve so often heard.” 
“Yes,” cried an irreverent little Snow Sprite, 
as she did the skirt dance over the golden sur¬ 
face of the orange, “these are the golden 
streets, and this the far-famed ‘Beula Land.’ ” 
“Yet, what does a little featherhead like you 
know about ‘golden streets,’ or ‘Beula Land’ ?” 
cried several in good-natured raillery. But 
their hilarity was suddenly checked by a wise 
old Sprite, with locks even whiter than his 
snowy robes, who had whirled into their midst, 
exclaiming excitedly: “Now, all this specula¬ 
tion is very pretty, but by no means to the 
point. If we expect to make this beautiful 
golden sphere our permanent home we must 
get down to business. Don’t you know,” he 
continued, “there is sufficient internal heat in 
this new world of ours to melt us all in no 
time—change us into Water Sprites, and send 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


us trickling off before we know what we are 
about? So get busy every frolicsome one of 
you! Blow your cold breath on the surface 
here, thrust in an ice spear there, bury your 
sharp little teeth deep into its golden crust, so 
that it may be converted into a great golden 
ball of ice as speedily as possible, for you 
know when we begin to sink our wells we 
shall want to be able to serve orange sherbet 
independent of the ice factories.” Nor were 
these the only busy sprites; others had quickly 
followed the example here set, until every big 
yellow orange in the grove boasted of one or 
more colonies. And so enthusiastic were these 
enterprising little people that there sprang up, 
as if by magic, 

“Great cities with temples and towers and 
trees, 

All pictured in silver and sheen.” 

And so intent were they upon their 
plans of crystallization that they forgot all 
about the Heat Fairies, of whom they had 
been warned; forgot, too, that they were 
within the domain of the South Wind, who 
might at a breath destroy their artistic archi¬ 
tecture. When all of a sudden—without a 
note of warning—a warm breeze sprang up, 
causing a feeling of languor and inertia. But 
an icy breath from the North Wind, acting 
12 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

like a tonic, restored their flagging energy; 
and the construction work took on renewed 
splendor. “Now, see here!” shouted the 
South Wind to the Heat Fairies, “this will 
never do! These little marauders will not 
leave us a single luscious orange with which 
to cool our parched throats during the coming 
dog days. It is quite time we were making 
them feel our presence.” And with this his 
voice rang out loud and clear: “To arms, 
Children of the Tropics! Kiss their cold 
cheeks with your warm red lips; breathe on 
their ice castles and level them to the earth. 
Thrust them through with your gleaming sun¬ 
beam lances.” The Heat Fairies, impatient 
from having been held so long under restraint, 
now flung themselves into battle array. Then 
followed a conflict fierce beyond our power to 
depict. “Dispel the White Peril’!” became 
the watchword of the Heat Fairies. But they 
soon found that they were combating a stub¬ 
born little people, and for a time felt that 
they were on losing ground. And it is hard to 
conjecture what the result would have been 
had not “Old Sol,” their Great Father, sprung 
suddenly from behind a cloud and hurled 
down a million or so of freshly burnished 
spears, to replenish the broken and well-spent 
blades with which they were endeavoring, 
against fearful odds, to defend themselves and 

13 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

their beautiful orchards and flower gardens. 
Confidence being now restored, the South 
Wind began to pipe a soft strain on a wind 
instrument, hoping thus to inspire them to 
more effectual efforts. And with happy “re¬ 
sults, too, for, thus encouraged, the Heat 
Fairies, like a great conflagration, carried 
everything before them. One little Hot¬ 
headed Defendant of the Tropics thrust a 
shining blade into the yielding side of a little 
Snow Sprite; and, with her victim thus im¬ 
paled, was in the act of holding him up in 
triumph, when to her surprise the roguish lit¬ 
tle elf suddenly took it into his vacillating lit¬ 
tle brain to turn himself into a Water Sprite. 
And, thus transmogrified, ascended gracefully 
to the blue ether far above, where to his de¬ 
light he found a commodious cloud ship, all 
white and gold, safely moored for the time 
to the majestic peak of “The Black Dome.” 
“You grand old Ship of State, we thank you 
for your timely rescue!” he exclaimed as he 
stepped on the gangway of this stately cloud 
vessel—the only air ship that has ever suc¬ 
cessfully solved the problem of aerial naviga¬ 
tion. By this time he had reached the upper 
deck, where many of his companions, who had 
preceded him, had already assembled. What 
a Babel of voices greeted him, all talking at 
once, each endeavoring to get a hearing, while 
14 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


he related some thrilling incident of his late 
struggle with the seemingly invincible Heat 
Fairies. “We should Thank our Stars’!” one 
was heard to exclaim, “that we got away at 
all from those little Heat Demons. One of 
them thrust one of their keen little blades clear 
through me. My, how my side did burn!” 
“It was my fate also to meet with just such 
an experience,” chimed in the newcomer, “and 
if I hadn’t been the fleetest little fairy 
that ever did flit I wouldn’t be here to tell 
the tale.” “Yes, I saw that you were in close 
quarters, and was coming to your assistance 
when one of the little heat fiends made a dash 
at me, and had her aim struck home it would 
have been the last of ‘Yours truly.’ For I 
am quite sure it was no ordinary sunbeam 
with which she was armed, but a veritable 
X-ray!” And thus gayly they chattered, while 
the magic ship sailed majestically on, bearing 
them safely back to the “Land of the North 
Wind. Back to their father, the Ice King, 
whose wonderful crystal palace, all hung in 
dainty tapestry of frost work, is high among 
the snowy mountains, where from pinnacle to 
pinnacle flash the Boreal-lights, in all their 
dazzling splendor!” 

But the Heat Fairies? With strength well 
spent, yet exultant over their brilliant con¬ 
quest, with characteristic energy they begin the 
i5 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


happy task of repair, declaring that the dainty 
scent satchets of tropical odors was the most 
formidable weapon wielded in the strife, and 
laughed when they recalled how the warm 
fragrance struck like a pestilence through the 
ranks of the fleeing foe. The work done by 
the victors was rapid and effectual, and when 
there was left no trace of injury done to gar¬ 
den or grove, they hie them back to the land 
of sunshine and beauty; back to the vine-clad 
banks of the Amazon; back to where climb 
flowers of exquisite form and tint, from the 
dark, cool depths below to the glorious light 
above, to bank themselves in floral beauty past 
anything yet beheld by man. And where they 
hold for the successful aeronaut the most bril¬ 
liant floral display this side the Land 

“Where rivers doth wander, 

O’er sands of Gold.” 

And in this land of bloom and beauty—the 
hanging gardens of the New World—the 
brilliant little Heat Fairies are as busy as ever, 
fashioning gorgeous green robes, all hand- 
painted in floral designs, for Dame Nature, 
who sits forever on her throne, queen of the 
Tropics. And the South Wind still blows 
softly on his reed trumpets, while the merry 
little Heat Fairies, all robed in rainbow tints, 
16 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


dance to the soft music, and chant right mer¬ 
rily: 

“Did you ever, ever hear 
Of the Frolic Fairies dear? 

They are a blessed little race 
Peering up in Fancy’s face. 

In the valley, on the hill, 

By the fountain and the rill, 

Laughing out between the leaves 
That the loving Summer weaves.’' 




SOCIAL REFORM, 


OR 

BOOK REVIEW OF BELLAMY’S “LOOKING 
BACKWARD.” 

Bellamy says that to those whose studies 
have not been largely historical it would be 
difficult to realize that the present organiza¬ 
tion of society, in its completeness, is less than 
a century old. Yet no historical fact is better 
established, and we can nowhere find more 
solid ground for daring anticipations of future 
development than by “Looking Backward” 
upon the progress of the past hundred years. 

He claims to have learned from a wise 
teacher that much learning is a weariness to 
the flesh, so he strove to alleviate the in¬ 
structive quality of the book by casting it in 
the form of a romance, which he trusted 
would not be wholly without interest on its 
own account. But the truth itself, “Social 
Reform,” is too securely interwoven, too truly 
a part of the texture, to be lost sight of, were 
the romance never so interesting. He seems 
to aim at a general reform, a reform that 
18 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


would cover the whole ground, as he boldly 
attacks the whole social structure, and with 
one bold stroke would revolutionize the whole 
social world. His comparing society to a pro¬ 
digious coach, to which the masses of human¬ 
ity are harnessed, their mad leaping and 
plunging under the pitless lash of hunger, was 
certainly well conceived, and the passengers 
who occupied the luxurious upper seats, call¬ 
ing down encouragingly to the toilers of the 
rope, to be patient, as there was a possible 
compensation in another world for the hard¬ 
ness of their lot, and interspersing their pious 
exhortations with salves and liniments for the 
crippled and injured is well depicted. 

But need we follow Bellamy to learn how 
insecure are these upper? No, there was a 
fearful jolt of too recent a date, which sent 
the proud daughters of the Southland top¬ 
pling from the luxurious seats of the Ancestral 
coach, compelling them to drag that same 
coach upon which they had lately ridden so 
pleasantly, and in a measure destroying the 
hallucination that they were not exactly like 
their brothers and sisters who toiled at the 
rope, but of finer clay. Yet, after all, little 
seemed gained by this leveling process, as the 
veriest churl, who by patient toil, or by one 
bold leap, no sooner clears the mmm and finds 
himself for the time an occupant of the long 
i9 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

coveted seat, than a strange transformation 
takes place, and in some vague, mystical way 
there starts through his frame of potters’ clay 
a magic power, transforming it into the rarest 
Havelin, and in imitation of the goodly com¬ 
pany with which he finds himself surrounded, 
he, too, draws his robes of ermine more closely 
about his newly acquired perfections, and, 
looking down upon those who have so lately 
been his companions in toil, says: “I am holier 
than thou.” The effect is maddening, but the 
process goes on in an endless circle. Human¬ 
ity climbing to the top round of the social 
ladder, then plunging headlong into chaos. 
Each successive experience of this kind raised 
many a puzzling bump on the human cra¬ 
nium which, however, in time received an ap¬ 
propriate name by the quick-witted phrenolo¬ 
gist, until at length one bold leader having 
received an uncommonly hard fall, developed 
an uncommonly large bump, said bump con¬ 
taining the germ of Anarchy, the outgrowth 
of which threatened a social cataclysm. Yet 
it is self-evident that something must have 
averted the dread catastrophe, or there must 
have been a craft of some kind corresponding 
to Noah’s Ark, and an Ararat upon which it 
rested, else there would have been no Doctor 
Leete to explain to our late Rip Van Winkle 
the mechanism of this new and marvelous So- 
20 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

cial Structure which is the outgrowth of the 
twentieth century. 

The Romance is briefly this: Julian West 
and Edith Bartlet were lovers, who awaited 
the completion of their residence, delayed by 
repeated strikes, for the consummation of their 
marriage. Mr. W. was a great sufferer from 
insomnia, and to shut out the noise from the 
outside world, had his sleeping apartments 
fitted up in the basement of his ancestral home, 
the walls of which were hermetically sealed. 
It might seem that the tenant of such a cham¬ 
ber might readily command sleep, yet not so, 
as our hero was frequently forced to call to his 
aid one Doctor Pillsbury, a “Professor of Ani¬ 
mal Magnetism.” 

On one occasion, after having spent the 
evening with his lady love, on his return home 
he found himself in an unusually nervous state 
(which is infrequently the case) and de¬ 
cided to call in this remarkable mesmerist, to 
whose magical touch he readily succumbed. 
That night the house burned to ashes, leav¬ 
ing the sleeper undisturbed. He lay in this 
state for a period of 113 years, when Doctor 
Leete, the new proprietor, while excavating 
for a laboratory, happened to strike the solid 
masonry of this underground chamber, to 
which, after great difficulty, he succeeded in 
gaining entrance, to find a bedroom, fitted up 
21 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


in the style of the nineteenth century, and lying 
on the bed was a young man of about 30 sum¬ 
mers, who was, of course, supposed to be dead. 
But the extraordinary state of preservation of 
the body was such as to call forth both ad¬ 
miration and amazement that such a process 
of embalming should have been known by 
their immediate ancestors. But Doctor L. 
himself suspected that he was not dead, but 
that it was merely a suspension of the vital 
forces, and immediately began a systematic 
attempt at resuscitation, which happily re¬ 
sulted in restoring to life a man that belonged 
to the preceding century. Everything to him 
was of course new and strange, and he at first 
refused to believe otherwise than that he was 
the victim of some trick. His memory was 
perfectly clear, and he spoke of the events in 
his past life as though they had transpired 
but yesterday, complacently calling for Sawier, 
his old servant, to be assured that Sawier had 
excellent reasons for not being present. 

On being shown from the roof garden the 
new Boston (the Boston of the twentieth cen¬ 
tury) he finally became convinced that the 
story first told him was no fiction, and that he 
was truly a denizen of the twentieth century, 
and immediately set about the task of ac¬ 
quainting himself with his new surroundings. 
The first thing that seemed to impress him 
22 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


was the total absence of chimneys and their 
smoke. Next he wanted to know what solu¬ 
tion had been found for the labor problem, 
as it had been the Sphinx’s riddle of the nine¬ 
teenth century; but was told that it was no 
riddle at all, or, at least, a riddle so simple as 
to have solved itself by a simple process of 
evolution; that concentration of capital had 
gone on, and that business had been carried 
on by larger and larger syndicates, until early 
in the past century the evolution was com¬ 
pleted by the final consolidation of the entire 
capital of the nation. That is, the people of 
the United States had decided to assume the 
conduct of their own business, just as two 
hundred years before they had assumed the 
conduct of their own government. 

He was further told that the labor question 
had adjusted itself on the principle of uni¬ 
versal military service. That the period of 
youth was held sacred to education up to the 
age of 21. The period of industrial service 
lasted 24 years. That they had regular “mus¬ 
ter days,” when all who had reached the age 
of 21 were mustered into service, and at the 
same time those who had reached the age of 
45 were honorably mustered out; that this 
was their gala day, their anual “Olympiad.” 
He was next, in turn, shown the stores, or, 
rather, the great distributing establishment; 

23 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


whose domes reached a hundred feet above, 
and flooded with mellow light the frescoed 
walls and magnificent fountains; the grand 
public dining halls, whose marble corridors 
were flooded with the most soul-inspiring mu¬ 
sic; the luxurious libraries, radiant with the 
intellectual splendor of the twentieth century; 
and, last but not least, the extreme simplicity 
and efficacy of the governmental machinery, 
finally ending the bewildering revelation with 
the astounding assertion that falsehood was 
so despised among them that the offender him¬ 
self would not resort to it, even to evade pun¬ 
ishment. This was the climax, and naturally 
led the astonished nineteenth-century man to 
exclaim: “Well, if lying has gone out of fash¬ 
ion, this is indeed the ‘New Heaven and the 
new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness/ of 
which the prophets told!” 

As love is a spontaneous plant, you will 
scarcely be surprised that a new love story 
should have sprung up with this resurrected 
fossil of the nineteenth century, or at being in¬ 
troduced to Miss Edith Leete, fair-haired and 
blue-eyed, who proved to be no other than 
the great-granddaughter of another Edith 
known and loved a century before. These two 
naturally fall in love with each other, which 
is admissible in g some cases, and spent many 
hours engaged in the strangest conversation 
24 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


that ever passed between two lovers, the bur¬ 
den of which was the Edith of a century 
before, for whom our little heroine expressed 
the most tender affections and gave many a 
fond assurance that she entertained no jeal¬ 
ousy for one who was at the same time her 
rival and great-grandmother. And, strange to 
say, to both Edith and her lover there was a 
corresponding confusion of identities, and 
each shared the belief that spirits sometimes 
come back to earth, to fulfill some mission- left 
undone. And that the spirit of Edith Bartlet 
lived again in Edith Leete. 


25 


RANDOM THOUGHTS ON “THE 
SCIENCE OF STUDY.” 


“I’ve wooed the Muse from morn till night, 
I’ve wooed her, too, the whole day long, 

To bring from story or from song 
Some word of wisdom or of might. 

Six lines, no more, are all required. 

And yet with these Fve made you tired.” 

In the introductory chapter to “The Science 
of Study” we meet with this inquiry: Is there 
a science of study? Which is answered by 
another profound inquiry: “If so, why all this 
conflict of curricula?” And as in the intro¬ 
ductory chapter, so it is throughout the entire 
work; inquiry is heaped upon inquiry until 
we fear that Mr. Moore, on reaching the 
Astral P, will, like the traditional small boy, 
find his inquiring mind embodied in a mam¬ 
moth interrogation point. 

In the second chapter he urges that the first 
step in the solution of any problem is to 
search out its fundamental principles, but he 
is shrewd enough to leave us to do the search¬ 
ing. And with precious little light by which 
to search. 

A little farther on he seems to discover that 
26 . 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


a great breach lies between the High School 
and College. Yet he makes no effort to close 
the gap. Fancy he has left that little job for 
us, too. True, he dumps in a few random 
suggestions which serve the purpose about as 
ineffectually as did the countless treasures sac¬ 
rificed serve to fill the Roman chasm. And, 
again, the augurs declare that the gulf will 
never close until the most precious treasure— 
gifted sons—shall be cast into the abyss. And 
with bated breath we await the coming of the 
modern Quintus Curtius, who, mounted and 
riding at full speed, will leap into its yawn¬ 
ing depths. 

Among other profundities we find this: 
“What part does the student play in this life¬ 
building drama ?” “For whose benefit is the 
drama being enacted ?” From the depth of the 
great outside world comes the reply: “For the 
leading character, of course.” “The leading 
character,” it repeats, “has always been the 
hero of the play.” “But who,” we ask*, “is 
the leading character?” Is it the teacher or 
professor who stands at the head of each in¬ 
stitution of learning, whether great or small? 
or is it the individual student, who by dint of 
superior intellectual developments, or by mere 
verbal memory, places himself at the head of 
his individual class, and thus throughout the 
entire course installs himself as class leader?” 

27 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


It would be monstrous to presuppose that the 
whole educational structure should be wrought 
out for the benefit of the favored few, and 
we are gratified to find that at this one point, 
at least, our ideas and those of the writer do 
not diverge. Gratified to find ourselves at this 
point in perfect harmony. For he assures us 
that our educational institutions are not in 
operation for the benefit of the faculty, or 
for the erection of imposing man-builded 
structures which are to serve the one purpose 
of filling a gaping public with wonder and ad¬ 
miration. Nor is it the student’s part to fur¬ 
nish the capital to keep the educational ma¬ 
chinery of these complicated Brain Factories 
in operation. No, no, no! such ideas are alto¬ 
gether erroneous, and it is past belief that 
the intellectual world should have entertained 
such fallacious ideas deep in this enlightened 
twentieth century. And at this point comes 
the startling revelation “That the student him¬ 
self constitutes the organic bases of all educa¬ 
tional institutions.” A truth sublime in its 
simplicity. Strange—that we never thought 
of it before. 

But the subject has become interesting. 

He next takes up the defense of the individ¬ 
ual student, who he justly claims is forgotten 
in the mass—condemns, as we all do, the pres¬ 
ent system of promoting in droves, or job 
28 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


lots, and demands a radical change—a change 
that shall shake to the foundation the present 
educational structure, and establish a new edu¬ 
cation, whose essence shall be individualism. 
Now, this change is no doubt just what we 
need. Yet methinks that even under the pres¬ 
ent system, faulty though it may be, individ¬ 
uality is in no wise in jeopardy. While the 
ethereal nature may suffer loss in many ways 
from being yoked as co-worker with the ma¬ 
terialist, yet no environment ever set to work 
a combination of forces sufficiently strong to 
bias the bent of mind in either type. 

“You may grind their souls in the selfsame 
mill— 

You may bind them heart and brow, 

But the poet will follow the rainbow still, 

And his brother will follow the plow.” 

Then comes the subject of character build¬ 
ing. And we are urged to make sharp dis¬ 
tinctions between the true and false, good and 
evil. “Character, not intellect,” he affirms, 
“should be the all-dominant aim of study.” 
“Fullness of personality.” “The development 
of a lofty ideal.” 

But even here we are apt to meet with de¬ 
feat at any turn. 

For heredity ofttimes lays her iron grasp on 
the most promising student. And Time, the 
29 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

master tutor, must decide as to whether he 
shall wear in classic halls the classic robe, or 
in a less honorable institution the horizontal 
stripes of the criminal. Whether he shall de¬ 
velop into a Washington or a Uriah Heep, 
a Gladstone or a Rhoden. So there is a limit 
even to the most efficient educator, for with 
all the bigotry of our profession, from the 
honorable occupant of the “Chair of Greek,” 
down to the self-important janitor, who can 
say as he lays his hand on an individual stu¬ 
dent: “Of this I will mould a perfect char¬ 
acter?” Not one, even should he find a soil 
where nature has implanted every seed in the 
catalogue that Treble himself would pronounce 
as “good.” 

We say of this individual: “He is good.” 
Of that: “He is bad.” An assertion seem- 
ingly paradoxical. For what is good? and 
what is bad ? When we have excepted the one 
perfect character—the “Man of Galilee”—we 
may search through history, both sacred and 
profane, without finding one character purely 
human, yet purely good. Then, too, “The 
Book” says: “There are none good—no, not 
one.” So we will cease to dream of the per¬ 
fect character, and say, with the poet: 

“In men, whom men pronounce as ill, 

We find so much of goodness still; 

30 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


In men, whom men pronounce divine, 

We find so much to mar and blot 
We hesitate to draw the line 
Between the two where God has not.” 

But we must still follow the interrogator, 
hoping yet to find a rift through which a 
flood of light will stream that will serve to lift 
us to higher things, and even from the clod 
borrow fresh inspiration, for— 

“Every clod feels a thrill of might, 

An instinct within it that reaches and towers, 
And, groping about it blindly for light, 

Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers.” 

\ 

Thus we again find ourselves in a mirror- 
maze of interrogatives on Physical Culture, 
Ethical Culture, the Professional course, etc., 
etc., in such bewildering profusion that both 
the surface student and he of the deep-set 
mental shaft will alike agree that the work is 
rich in suggestions for profound and contin¬ 
ued research. For to answer the multi¬ 
tudinous questions contained therein would re¬ 
quire a research through the hoarded archives 
of all ages—past and present. The subjects 
embracing History, Mathematics, Science, 
Psychology, Music, Art, and Literature, rang¬ 
ing from: “In the beginning God created 
3i 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


heaven and earth,” down to the latest issue of 
the “Catahoula News.” 

And as to time- Well, could Methuse¬ 

lah’s extra 929 years be added to our allotted 
three score and ten, we would find it all too 
short for so heavy a task. 

So, upon the whole, it is not altogether a 
delightful thought for contemplation. Yet on 
we go, hope ofttimes shrinking back baffled 
but not destroyed. We have now reached the 
sixth chapter. “Ah ! here,” we exclaim trium¬ 
phantly, “here we are to find the object of our 
quest!” and we hurry on from paragraph to 
paragraph, from page to page, confidently be¬ 
lieving that our inquiry is to be answered at 
each next turn. And in our enthusiasm we 
forget the weight of years, forget the added 
avoirdupois, forget the crystal lens now so 
indispensable to failing sight, and have in 
fancy been transported back through the long 
vista of years, and as one of a merry group 
of children join in the time-honored game of 
“Hide and Switch.” “Where could they have 
hidden the switch?” we say almost aloud, yet 
still search on amid the merry ring of child¬ 
ish laughter, till Kittie’s gleeful taunt of hot, 
hotter, hottest! reaches its climax in: “You 
are burning up!” When Nancy, the little col¬ 
ored maid, calls out in blunt honesty: “Miss 
Josie, da’s gis fooling you. ’Tain’t no switch 
32 



BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


dare.” This brings about a sudden though 
healthy reaction. We now for the first time 
realize that we have been following a ‘‘Will 
o’ the Wisp.” Yet we again scan the printed 
page. “Why, these pages,” we repeat re¬ 
proachfully, “held out rich possibilities for the 
tangible and practicable, but in some vague, 
mystic way they seem to elude our grasp.” 
But we read on a little farther and find that 
the author complacently and unapologetically 
sends us in quest of a wise man, who shall 
write us a book. Yes, write us a book, full 
and complete. A book that will answer every 
inquiry and satiate the hungry soul. And with 
renewed zeal we again press forward in search 
of this wise man. For faith and hope are 
made of too volatile a stuff to remain long 
inert. But, alas! I fear that when the last 
trump shall sound that some of us will still 
be in pursuit of this wise man. 

And so we come to the closing chapter. 

Having patiently followed the author 
through his firstly, secondly, thirdly, fourthly, 
fifthly; a ly, bely, cely, dely, ely. And we re¬ 
gret to say from “A to Izzard” we haven't 
found one single practical idea. The con¬ 
victions we entertained at the outset we still 
entertain, and find ourselves in about the same 
position as the maiden —not the one, all for¬ 
lorn, however, but she of a faith as bright as 
33 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

the “Rocks of Gibraltar/’ yet who dares put 
her lover’s faithfulness to so crucial a test as 
this fickle Oracle—A “Field Daisy.” “A little, 
too much, not at all, with truest heart beyond 
belief. “A little, too much, not at all, with 
truest heart, beyond belief—so rang the 

changes o’er and o’er- Ah! foolish task to 

measure out love’s value on a daisy leaf. 

But as she plucks the latest leaf with “Not 
at all ” we hear her say: 

“Ah! much you know, you silly fiower; 

He’ll love me to his dying day.” 

The Oracle is emphatically proven false. 
And, as with the flower, so it is with the book. 
For as we turn the latest leaf, with “Not at 
all,” we’re heard to say: 

“For aught you teach, you silly book, 

We are blind unto our dying day.” 


34 



THE TEACHER AND HER PER¬ 
PLEXITIES. 

“I’ve wooed the muse from morn till night, 
I’ve wooed her, too, the whole night long, 
To bring from story or from song 
Some word of wisdom or of might— 

Six lines, no more, are all required, 

And yet with these Eve made you tired.” 

Here we experience Longfellow’s fear for 
“Outre-Mer,” lest “some freebooter, in the 
way of a critic, should descry its strange 
colors, hail it through a gray goose quill, and 
sink it without more ado.” Yet, notwithstand¬ 
ing these fears, this same little literary craft, 
“Outre-Mer,” deservedly sails on, thus encour¬ 
aging many another to venture on the high 
seas, when he himself knows that his craft 
deserves no better fate than to be wrecked 
with the launching. 

But to the teacher and her perplexities: 
When the “War God” waved his bloody pin¬ 
ions over our fair Southland, driving her 
petted daughter into the busy marts of life, 
then was a new impetus given to teaching, and 
35 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


it was then that the profession rose to the 
dignity of a profession indeed, and the teacher 
stood, as was her due, among earth’s honora¬ 
ble women; and her influence has gone out to 
as many nations, and blessed as many hearth¬ 
stones as were ever kindled by the fire which 
Promethus stole from heaven. Woman was 
no longer a rich possibility, but a crowning 
success, not only as a teacher, but in many 
avenues hitherto pressed only by the mascu¬ 
line foot. And still she climbs, but heights are 
cold—hence the overplus of “Foolish Vir¬ 
gins.”* 

It is easier than we fancy to outgrow our 
friends intellectually, yet grow we must, and, 
as far as possible, we must inspire our friends 
to keep pace with our progress, as intellectual 
stagnation is the saddest of all things to con¬ 
template; while, on the other hand, there is 
nothing more pleasing than to watch the un¬ 
folding of a little child’s intellect. And shall 
such bunglers as we know ourselves to be un¬ 
dertake a task so delicately difficult? Verily, 
“Fools” still “rush in, where angels dare not 
tread.” 

Much’ is now being written about the 

*Reference to the little Sunday-school girl, who re¬ 
plied on being asked, “Who were the foolish Virgins ?” 
«It’s them as didn’t get married.” 

3 ^ 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

process of “Brain Building.” And what is it 
all about? we ask. How are we to success¬ 
fully develop the desirable and suppress the 
undesirable qualities? One condemns the 
habit of telling excitable children the blood¬ 
thirsty tales of “Red Riding Hood,” “Blue 
Beard,” “The Babes in the Wood,” etc., as it 
tends to the building or strengthening of the 
brain cells of fear, revenge, destruction, and 
so forth, and urges that, instead of these, they 
should be told of the mother ant sitting out 
in the sunshine with her baby in her arms, 
and of how she hurries into her anthill house 
when the rain begins to fall, just like a hu¬ 
man mother would do. Or tell them of the 
patient, love-hungry eyes of horses, dogs, and 
cats, who cannot make their wants known, but 
crave care and kindness just as children do. 
Thus developing first of all the love cells, 
which is virtually developing all human and 
sympathetic qualities. 

Vincent de Beauvais, a renowned teacher 
of the Middle Ages, held that only two things 
constituted education: The disaccustoming to 
evil and accustoming to good. Such an edu¬ 
cational theory as this seems simple enough' 
for any one to grasp. But, in the first place, 
what is good ? and what is bad ? In this world 
things are so paradoxical that we can only 
'37 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


explain them by a paradox. Every child in 
itself is a paradox. We say of this child: “He 
is good/' an assertion seemingly absurd, yet 
true. Since, in no time, place, or legendary 
antiquity has a perfect character, purely hu¬ 
man, yet been established. And the fact forces 
us to exclaim with the poet: 

“In men, whom men pronounce as ill, 

We find so much of goodness still; 

In men whom men pronounce divine 
We find so much to mar and blot 
We hesitate to draw the line 
Between the two, where God h^s not.” 

How little we understand each other, How 
little we understand the child with which we 
have to deal, and, alas! how little we know 
of the most commonplace things that sur¬ 
round us; yet they are our environments, and 
we learn to love them and are happy, in a 
way. But whence comes this unrest, this 
longing to form new friendships, this striving 
to peer into the future, this longing to lift 
the veil separating the visible from the unseen? 
For who has not asked: “Does the recording 
angel see a strange, pretty name written on 
a ‘white stone/ which I shall one day receive 
with an invitation to come up higher?” Many 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


such desires, many such queries, come crowd¬ 
ing in upon us. And are they never to be 
answered? Must the soul shrink back into 
itself and forever crush all such desires? I 
think not; for He who bade us to the feast 
will, no doubt, in His own good time and way, 
reveal all, as the “soul passes through the 
different gradations of glory, from the pale, 
human soul” to that of the archangel. But 
we must not dwell on things so visionary, for 
with what we have to deal are the knotty 
points in our daily lives—difficulties so per¬ 
plexing—trials so vexatious—that we long to 
rise, like the eagle, to the bright blue above 
the beating tempest. But we must remember 
that even the eagle cannot remain long thus 
poised in his aerial height, but must anon 
plunge downward through the black storm 
abyss to the crag where cowers his unfledged 
brood. 

God has for a time entrusted to our care 
His own fledglings. So let us be true to the 
trust. Let us meet these trials and vexations 
with bright and sunny courage, remembering 
that character is formed in the “Fire of the 
Forge of Life.” And that: 

“Daily, with' souls that cringe and plot, 

We Sinais climb, and know it not.” 

39 


BREEZES FROM TEIE SOUTHLAND 


Happy is he who has learned to turn eacH 
stumbling-block into a stepping-stone to a 
higher life. Whose 

“Prayers a few short words of might, 

That the God of Hosts may arm the right.” 

Each life, at best, is but a span; and there 
is no “Joshua to bid the declining sun stand 
still.” So let us “work while it is yet day, 
for the night cometh when no man can work.” 
And we will find beauties even in this tread¬ 
mill existence, and prove by our zeal how 
grand may be life’s might when guided by 
blessed Bethlehem’s Star! 


r 4o 


THE SEED WE SOW. 


My little cousins were one day preparing 
their Sabbath school lesson, when a little tot 
of three summers joined the group. “Percy,” 
said one of the boys to the newcomer, “who 
made you?” God, was the orthodox answer. 
Next in order came the question, What did 
he make you for? “Why, he made me for a 
boy,” was the reply. A few days later these 
same promising little lads were discussing 
their future with all the enthusiasm of child¬ 
hood. One young hopeful aspired to being 
a lawyer, another a doctor, while to a third 
all that was beautiful in life culminated in a 
farm. “Percy,” said one, addressing our lit¬ 
tle hero, “what are you going to be when 
you are grown?” “Ps gine to be a man.” 

And such is the height of many a youthful 
aspiration. ’Tis ours to inspire a loftier pur¬ 
pose, but to accomplish this, much labor is 
necessary ere we may hope to behold the per¬ 
fect man. Ours is a garden of souls, where 
seed are to be sown which must blossom in 
eternity. ’Tis a most difficult task; and we 
shrink from it; but God commands, and his 
unspoken voice is fuller Sinai’s thunders. So 
4i 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

let us to the task. How full the catalogue—* 
love, patience, industry, truth, reverence, tem¬ 
perance, and honor. These, with many of the 
minor graces to form the pretty border plants, 
are the seed which we are to sow. But there 
are other seed which we unwittingly sow, and 
these spontaneous plants are often more pro¬ 
ductive than those whose seed were more care¬ 
fully chosen. Every movement, every gesture, 
every word we utter leaves its impress. Yea, 
the very thoughts we think, the very intona¬ 
tion of the voice, are often returned with 
startling fidelity. Then again, by some little 
carelessness of enunciation, we find ourselves 
as completely misunderstood as the teacher 
who gave in dictation: “A thing of beauty is 
a joy forever,” but, when reproduced, finds it 
to read: “A thing of beauty is a boy forever.” 
Bent of mind on the part of the little lassie 
who chanced to make this blunder could hardly 
explain the error, and the next we hear of the 
teacher she is devoutly applying herself to the 
study of vocal culture. Another little incident 
illustrative of the fruits of such ill-sown seed 
came within my experience. A youthful mem¬ 
ber of our family once attended a protracted 
meeting where chanced to be sung the good 
old hymn, “Humbly at Thy Cross I bow.” 
Over and over ran the grand old chorus. The 
words fell on the ear of the little listener. 

42 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


What could they mean? What a funny song 
to sing in church, argued the little philoso¬ 
pher, but the mystery was soon to be cleared. 
On reaching home: “Mamma,” the little fel¬ 
low drawled out in that nasal twang so pe¬ 
culiar to childhood, “what was it they sung 
at church to-day about ‘Cross-eyed Bob’?” 
How carefully, then, should we guard against 
the seed we would not sow, knowing how 
easily we are misunderstood. Then, again, 
how readily they receive our ideas and how 
quickly they respond to our appeal. The 
mother’s influence is the one power greater 
than ours in this noble work of character 
building, for 

“The hand that rocks the cradle 

Is the hand that rules the world.” 

“In the morning sow thy seed” is the com¬ 
mand! “And in the evening withhold not 
thine hand; for thou knowest not whether 
shall prosper either this or that.” ’Tis ours 
to sow, ’tis God’s to give the increase. So 
let our works be spread out in silent appeal 
to Heaven, and blessings will fall on them 
as surely and abundantly as did the dews of 
old on Gideon’s fleece. 



GRAMMAR OF LIFE. 


“Love took up the Harp of Life, 

And smote upon the chords with might. ,, 

When, hark! a medley strangely fascinating, 
and from out its musical cadence there pipes 
forth in childish treble a familiar voice, which 
“rises in the scale until it is sailing the high 
C , s. ,, “John’s a noun; it’s a name, proper; 
it’s a particular name, masculine gender; it’s 
the name of a male, third person, spoken of 
singular number; it means but one, and nomi¬ 
native case to the verb struck,” etc. We 
pause, we listen, and as if by magic a quar¬ 
ter of a century has rolled away, and, as 
faithful as the needle to the pole, we turn 
once more to the old familiar schoolroom, and 
there, seated beside Pearl and Ruby, we again 
follow Flossie, with her dainty form and 
dainty ways, through a multitude of ad¬ 
jectives, with their positive, comparative, and 
superlative, as good, better, best; wise, 
wiser, wisest; beautiful, more beautiful, most 
44 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


beautiful—until both lads and lassies feel as¬ 
sured there never was a little girl so super¬ 
latively beautiful as Flossie with her flaxen 
curls a joy forever and a voice so sweet and 
musical that we are sorry when she has at 
last made satisfactory disposition of her 
wisest man. 

Next in turn comes the impetuous Sambola, 
“who breaks like a quarter horse through the 
moods, tenses, number, and person of the verb 
‘love / On he darts through the may, can, 
must; might, could, would, should of the Po¬ 
tential, and the mysterious contingencies of 
the Subjunctive, and finally rounds up with 
the Infinitive and Participle, in his marvelous 
cavalcade of deeds: probable, possible; present, 
past, and future,” in the great art and science 
of loving. 

Life seemed then as one long “gala day,” 
in which both individualities and personali¬ 
ties got hopelessly mixed in this tangled web 
of loving. But this vexed question can never 
enter as a disturbing element among our “Lili- 
putian Latter Day Saints,” as we are assured 
that a sterner power has since usurped Love’s 
throne. But be this as it may, we do know 
that the less sentimental, iron-sceptred 
“Drive!” now sits stern and decorous in the 
place of the one which formerly made bright 
eyes to sparkle. But, perchance, we waste our 
45 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

sympathy. For may it not be just possible 
that these sly little rogues have set their stiff, 
angular diagrams to a rhythm which our dull 
ears have failed to catch? or may they not 
even now be weaving around these unyield¬ 
ing horizontals, verticals, and slants a tangled 
web, with meshes too delicately wrought for 
our dim visions? They are working just 
such mystic spells, I ween. And these very 
angles that seem to us so formidable and im- 
poetic, no doubt serve as lurking places for the 
“Blind God,” from whence many a fatal shaft 
is sent. But it is wrong to pry. And “youth 
will not yield all her secrets.” So we must 
be content to wait until these sly little lads 
and lassies shall constitute a dignified body 
of pedagogues, as we do now, and then they 
won’t be ashamed to tell. Verily, the 
“Thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.” 
Still, there seems to lurk in our kindly na¬ 
tures a ghost of sympathy for these poor, love- 
born little grammarians, since we feel assured 
they have lost much of the poetry of life, in¬ 
asmuch as they have been denied the glorious 
privilege of joining this happy group, who, 
with unabated zeal, went careering in the 
manner above described, through Smith, But¬ 
ler, Murry, etc., to plunge deeper and deeper 
into the intricacies of “Young’s Night 
Thoughts/’ “Thompson’s Seasons,” “Pallox’s 
46 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


Course of Time,” and the immortal “Para¬ 
dise Lost,” with its 

“Which, when Beelzebub perceived,” 
Than, whom Satan excepted, 

None higher sat.” 

And as history will no doubt for once fail 
to repeat itself, they can never hope to enjoy 
the glorious privilege of completing this be¬ 
wildering course which insured to each a 
“sheepskin to indicate the quality of his 
brains” and set him all aquiver with impa¬ 
tience to seize, as did Phceton, the reins hither 
held in the steady grasp of the master, and 
to plunge onward at the same mad rate, per¬ 
chance to ruin, perchance to Glory’s goal. 

But why did the old master never hint that 
we would never be done with tenses until we 
w^ere done with time? Why did he fail to 
lend his own rich experience as a lens through 
which we might have viewed the future? 
Why? Yes, why? None can answer save he 
“Whose lips have been touched with a coal 
fresh from the altar of Inspiration.” Yet, 
after all, it was no doubt wiser that he left us 
as he did to the tender mercies of experience 
and the poet, else we could not to-day, with 
Maud Muller, sigh: 


“It might have been!” 
4 7 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

“The sturdy iron present, with its knocks, 
and knowledge,” is preeminently our own, but 
even here the poet has a share. And we hear 
him sing: 

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul. 
As the swift seasons roll, 

Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 

Shut thee from Heaven, with dome more 
vast.” 

But these two, the present and the past, 
possess but little power to hold us in thrall. 
But, oh, the witchery of the golden-zoned fu¬ 
ture! How like a bugle call is its “I shall 
be!” as it comes echoing down the corridors of 
time until it strikes upon “round, red lips,” 
and “I shall be!” 

“In clearer note is borne 

Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn.” 


HOMER MORE PRACTICAL THAN 
HERODITUS. 

Few will admit that it requires even the 
slightest stretch of the imagination to recog¬ 
nize in Homer’s works the practical as well 
as the beautiful. Yet, as there are some peo¬ 
ple who never see anything, even if it is as 
plain as a hole in a grindstone, unless it is 
pointed out to them, and some that can’t even 
see it then, and won’t believe there is any hole 
unless they can poke their fingers through it 
—we have imposed upon ourselves the pleas¬ 
ant task of elucidating these facts and of es¬ 
tablishing beyond controversy that Homer is 
preeminently more practical than Heroditus. 
Trusting that our eloquence may be duly rec¬ 
ognized and appreciated, and that a full and 
free conviction of the superior claims of Ho¬ 
mer’s works, as to their practical value to 
mankind, over those of Heroditus, may be 
fully and forever established in the minds of 
all lovers of classic literature, their opinion to 
the contrary notwithstanding. 

True, in Heroditus we everywhere find 
something to admire, something at which to 
49 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


wonder, something to set our fancy going, or 
even to wind up our enthusiasm; but for prac¬ 
tical values we must needs turn to Homer. 
The rape of Helen occasioned the siege of 
Troy, and from the days of Homer to the 
present the practice of stealing pretty wives 
seems to have recommended itself to each 
succeeding generation with such alarming em¬ 
phasis that even now such little episodes are 
being daily enacted, not only demonstrating 
the practicability, but the actual practice, of 
such deeds. And we find our modern Paris 
indulging in the same perfidious abuse of 
hospitality as that practiced by the hero of 
Troy on the unsuspecting Menelaus, while 
representatives of the faithless Helen seem 
to be steadily on the increase. 

Next in point of practical worth stands the 
example of divine Achilles, whom we find 
sulking in his tent because a fellow chieftain 
withholds from him some coveted treasure. 
And as even a suggestion from Homer has 
ever been law, the pouting policy was imme¬ 
diately adopted, and seems still to be forging 
toward the front, or to be largely in vogue, 
solely from the fact that mankind at once 
recognized its practical value, and found it so 
easily practiced, that to-day we find on every 
hand full-fledged champions, ready to defend 
the pouting Achilles of the present time for 

50 




BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

like conduct, knowing it to be the outgrowtK 
of Homer’s teachings. Again, in the Illiad, 
we are for a moment allowed a peep into the 
sanctum of Jupiter’s household, where we find 
Juno administering a severe lecture to her 
leagued lord for some rash promise made to 
the Trojans. And it is with thrilling interest 
that we follow Jupiter as he bandies words 
with his brilliant but shrewish wife; finally 
ending with a threat to flog her outright if 
she doesn’t hold her tongue. Yet, great as 
has ever been the interest awakened by this 
thrilling little Olympic episode, it is tame in 
comparison with the practical lessons to be 
gathered at this point in Homer’s teachings, 
and few, if any, will doubt that Jupiter’s 
method of dealing with a petulant woman has 
paved the way for many a like conquest in 
more enlightened ages. And so throughout 
we find that it is the practical beauties of Ho¬ 
meric creations that impart to us the secrets 
which have made them worthy to be immor¬ 
talized in song and verse. True, many of the 
legends are swollen with wonder stories, yet 
his master mind moulded this same legendary 
material into forms of such grace and strength' 
that even here we meet with many hidden 
truths of great practical worth. While it has 
been said his masterpieces were at once to the 
Greeks, history, poetry, and theology, Homer’s 
5i 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


heroes are simple in their lives, loves, and 
deaths, and served as models to the Greeks, as 
did the patriarchs of Holy Writ to the He¬ 
brews. And such men and women as have 
been produced by Homer’s genius have ever 
had, and must ever have a moulding and con¬ 
trolling influence over the minds of mankind 
at large, encouraging, ennobling, and lifting 
them above the follies and sins of common¬ 
place life. For instance, what a beautiful ex¬ 
ample of filial confidence is portrayed in Hec¬ 
tor, who deems his own gigantic strength and 
manly intellect as little worth when compared 
with those subtler powers with which he ac¬ 
credits his mother, when he beseeches her to 
supplicate the gods for divine aid in defense 
of Troy. While in Dione caressing the 
wounded palm of the immortal Venus, though 
enacted on Olympia’s rugged heights, brings 
to memory many pretty little home scenes of 
like nature, where wounds and bruises are 
kissed from rosy fingers, and love wins away 
all thought of real or imaginary woes. 

And who to-day could be persuaded to join 
us in our ten years’ wanderings with “Ithaca’s 
doomed king” but for the regal treats, in the 
way of practical events, which are to be met 
with at every turn of the story? 

True, a little impatience may be evinced to¬ 
ward the ease-loving lotus eaters; and we may 
52 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

crave the magic scarf of Ino to buoy us up 
until we have safely passed the isle of the 
enchantress Cerce, or rescued our hero from 
the snares of Calipso; but it will require but 
little effort to awaken the most enthusiastic 
interest in the more practical clothes-washing 
excursion upon which we find the lovely Nan- 
sicaa so intently bent. Some, perchance, may 
think it a rather odd sort of picnic excursion 
for the daughter of a king, but these little in¬ 
congruities are soon forgotten, while the beau¬ 
tiful lesson learned of the indulgent Alcinous 
has sunk deep into the heart of many a fond 
father, who will now, even without the inter¬ 
cession of the patron goddess, readily consent 
to their daughter’s occasionally indulging in 
the same pleasing recreation of doing up the 
family washing. Could anything be more 
practicable? While the patience embodied in 
the faithful Penelope, who sat for three long 
years, weaving, forever weaving, on the same 
filmy winding sheet, lending at the same time 
a patient though unwilling ear to the pleadings 
of a hundred lawless suitors, has no parallel in 
literature (save that of Job’s) and we are not 
sure that even Job’s patience doesn’t pale by 
comparison; and surely such transcendent vir¬ 
tues as are here portrayed must necessarily 
transmit much to mankind that is eminently, 
practical, and at the same time tend largely 
53 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


to change the modern woman to something 
resembling , at least, such classical ideals as 
Penelope. 

Then, aside from their practical worth, 
Homer’s works must ever be reverenced for 
their antiquity, for who can tell when or where 
they had their birth ? They were old when the 
great empires of the earth were in their in¬ 
fancy; old when Rome, the empress of the 
world, lay in swaddling bands; old ere Hero- 
ditus, the father of history, charmed his eager 
Greek hearers with his pages of marvelous 
beauty. Ancient Troy was to Heroditus but 
little more than a creation of Homer’s fertile 
brain. Vainly might he have sought for its 
pillars, its trophies, or its monuments of 
glory. None even then'could show where they 
stood; none but Homer could read the in¬ 
scriptions or tell the victor’s name. And 
Homer’s adroit commingling of facts and fan¬ 
cies was no doubt the great storehouse from 
whence Heroditus drew his inspiration, no 
doubt the mainspring that quickened his fac¬ 
ulties to such rich endeavor. So we conclude 
that much of the beautiful and all that is prac¬ 
tical in the works of the two authors will be 
ungrudgingly awarded to Homer. 


54 


OPTIMISMS OF EMERSON IN CON¬ 
TRAST WITH THE PESSIMISTIC 
VIEWS OF CARLYLE. 

With all due deference to the existing order 
of things, we are forced to accept the English 
analogon for every American writer. 

As Cooper is called the “American Scott,” 
so critical tradition has coupled Emerson with 
Carlyle. 

That Emerson’s mind received a nudge 
from “Saxtor Resartus” there is no doubt, 
while “Representative Men” is considered a 
counterpart of “Heroes and Hero Worship.” 
And the claim is so well founded that even 
a glance at the two works is sufficient to con¬ 
firm. 

The latter presents to us “The Hero as 
Prophet,” “The Hero as Poet,” “The Hero 
as Divinity,” and so on through six classes of 
“Heroes,” chosen from out “widely distant 
Climes and Epochs.” While from the former 
we are greeted by “Plato the Philosopher,” 
“Swedenborg the Mystic,” “Montague the 
Skeptic,” until Carlyle’s conventional six is 
counted in as many individual “Heroes,” 
whom he terms “Representative Men.” 

And there are perhaps a few other great 
55 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


focal points toward which the lines of the 
two writers converge, and from which radiate 
the moulding influence of each; yet so dual- 
istic are these influences as to have almost de¬ 
stroyed the well-based conclusion that the 
minds of the two writers ever ran parallel. 

Such are the “optimistic views” of Emer¬ 
son—such the “pessimistic views” of Carlyle. 

The optimistic rays of the one having 
caught the clear light of Heaven fall in mel¬ 
low tints over his “transcendental world,” 
while from the other comes a subdued and 
melancholy light, through a pessimistic prism 
—according to his own theory, “the black 
spot in his sunshine”—casting a paradise of 
shadows “where ghosts sit in darkness and 
dream that God is dead.” Thus it has ever 
been with Carlyle, a veritable ghost of human¬ 
ity—sitting amid the gathering gloom of 
spiritual darkness, which he himself had en¬ 
gendered. Never could he untwine that vexed 
skein which turned the heart’s blood into gall. 

While Emerson, who had never tasted the 
bitter waters of Marah, quaffed his nectar 
with unfeigned delight from “Beulah’s” sunny 
heights, wondering why his morbid brother 
should have chosen the low plains of Bakah— 
and, yet more, while in passing through the 
“Valley of Misery” he had “failed to make it 
a well.” 


56 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


Carlyle regarded great men as a controlling 
influence, and his own pessimism sprang large¬ 
ly from their foibles and failures. While to 
Emerson they were mere “fingerposts for the 
future”—or rare spirits possessed of a larger 
share of the “Over-soul.” 

Carlyle paused in sorrow—and silence—over 
the depth of darkness which he found even 
in noble natures. And, viewing Shakespeare 
through the “Shade of Hamlet’s Ghost,” 
depicts him as wading through the deep wa¬ 
ters of sorrow, and derides the common idea 
that he “Sat like a bird on a bough, pouring 
forth in an offhand way his inimitable songs.” 
“Never,” says Carlyle, “could any other than 
a man of sorrow have delineated a “Hamlet,” 
a “King Lear,” or a “Macbeth.” 

But Emerson sees the glee rather than the 
gloom of the immortal bard, and, knowing the 
sparkle of the true stone, sets it in high places. 
And from this Delphi comes the oracular 
voice of the great dramatist, bringing joy and 
emancipation to the hearts of men; and we 
find this divergence throughout their delinea¬ 
tion of both nature and character. The ideal¬ 
ist denying the independent existence of mat¬ 
ter. The materialist, clinging tentatiously to 
his theory of the tangible. 

The idealist holds that the world is an ap¬ 
parition which will one day vanish, and that 
57 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

we ourselves are “wrought of such stuff as 
dreams are.” God, they claim, can teach the 
human mind, and make it the receiver of so 
many congruent sensations, which we call sun, 
moon, star, etc. 

But in our utter helplessness to test the au¬ 
thenticity of our senses, or to know whether 
impressions on us correspond with outlying 
objects, what difference does it make whether 
Orion is really up in the heavens, or whether 
the gods have merely painted the image on 
the firmament of the soul ? 

Never could one solve the problem of the 
other. 

Emerson, ever true to his Ethical system of 
Transcendentalism, ever surrounded by his 
rainbow-tinted world, was a consistent opti¬ 
mist to the end. Never did doubt disturb the 
mystic communication of his perfectly attuned 
soul, while Carlyle’s last songs, filled with 
morbid doubts and fears, echo and reecho 
their hoarse notes of doom through the cor¬ 
ridors of time like the wail of a lost soul. 

So let us accept them as they are—in all 
their beauty, strength, and weakness—and 
make no further search for the Achilles’ heel 
by which “Mother Nature held her children.” 

We read the two, and from the sands of 
the Transcendentalist we gather gold—and 
from the gold of the denscentrantelist we 
53 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


gather sands—yet are pleased to have learned 
the beautiful lesson: 

“In men whom men pronounce as ill, 

We find so much of goodness still; 

In men whom men pronounce divine 
We find so much to mar and blot 
We hesitate to draw the line 
Between the two where God has not!” 

For the time the sunshine of the one has 
crept over the shadowy dial plate of the other, 
casting a bewildering maze of “Idealisms,” in 
which the real is made to appear shadowy. 
“Mysticisms/' in which Allegorical and Myth¬ 
ological deities are blended in wild confusion. 

Delusions for which they were not responsi¬ 
ble, and which cannot be reckoned with their 
sins. But from out this hopeless chaos of 
Idealisms, Mysticism, and delusions we gather 
up the broken beams—and, lo! there is one 
white ray—the white ray of truth—radiating 
in unbroken lines from the “Over-soul/' the 
“Great Son of Righteousness." While man 
—whether optimist or pessimist—stripped of 
all egotism and selfishness, is but the prism 
through which this divine light is shot. 


59 


FACTS AND FANCIES ABOUT EGYPT. 


In the Egyptian schools three forms of 
writing were employed: The hieroglyphic, 
consisting of rude pictures, usually employed 
in monumental inscriptions; the hieratic, a 
simplification of the hieroglyphic, and which 
formed the greater part of the papyrus manu¬ 
scripts; and the demotic, a still simpler form 
than the hieratic. Much ancient Egyptian lit¬ 
erature has come down to us—but from a 
literary standpoint it has disappointed expecta¬ 
tion. What it tells is interesting, but the 
mode of telling seldom rises to the dignity of 
style; and so unsystematic is this literature 
that it has not given us the connected history 
of a single reign, and it is due entirely to the 
severe work of able critics that from it any¬ 
thing like an intelligent whole has been con¬ 
structed. Yet Egyptian literature is not 
wholly without merit, and there is occasionally 
even a fine touch of humor. Still, there is a 
want of the lofty ideas which characterize all 
good literature. 

Attached to the chief temples of the Egyp- 
ians were colleges for the training of the 
sacerdotal order, and these institutions were 
60 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


the repositories of the wisdom of the Egyp¬ 
tians. These schools were taught by well- 
groomed priests, who ate but little, in order 
that the body might sit as lightly as possible 
about their souls. In addition to these ec¬ 
clesiastical schools, there seems to have been 
a system of “public schools,” which were open 
to all comers; and the son of the artisan sat 
on the same bench with the son of the noble , 
enjoyed the same educational privileges, with 
equal opportunity to distinguish himself. But 
these schools, like all others, were under the 
immediate supervision of the priests, upon 
whom devolved all work of education and the 
general culture of the people. 

The Greeks accounted for the early rise of 
the science of geometry among the Egyptians 
to the necessity they were under each year of 
reestablishing the boundaries of their fields, 
the inundation obliterating old landmarks and 
divisions. The science thus forced upon them 
was cultivated with zeal and success. A single 
papyrus has been discovered that holds 12 
geometrical theorems. The science of arith¬ 
metic was necessarily brought into requisi¬ 
tion in solving astronomical and geometrical 
problems. 

Much attention was given to the study of 
medicine in these Egyptian schools. Each doc¬ 
tor was a specialist, but he was not allowed 
61 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


to treat any case save in the manner prescribed 
by the customs of the past. The art of em¬ 
balming was known to the physicians only. 
This custom of preserving the body was per¬ 
sisted in from the fact that the Egyptians be¬ 
lieved that, after several thousand years, the 
departed soul would return to the earth and 
reanimate its former body. 

Judging from the great number and variety 
of their musical instruments, great attention 
must have been paid to this science. Some of 
these instruments were adapted to pleasure— 
the dance, etc.—some to military music; but 
most of them were used'in the temple service. 
The Egyptians seem to have been ignorant 
of harmony, but possessed fineness of ear and 
execution. They are accredited with having 
been singularly mirthful, and so given were 
they to caricature that even in the representa¬ 
tion of a funeral ceremony the artist cannot 
omit a ludicrous incident. 

But the science in which the ancient Egyp¬ 
tians seem to have attained especial proficiency 
was astronomy, of which astrology seems to 
have been a branch. Egyptian mythology is 
rich in beautiful mysteries, which no amount 
of learning can ever solve. What a strange, 
pretty myth we find in the Phoenix. This 
bird—so says tradition—comes flying from 
the east once in every 650 years, many other 
62 


BREEZES FROM ; THE SOUTHLAND 


birds with dazzling wings bearing it company. 
It reaches On, the City of the Sun, about the 
time of the vernal equinox, where it burns 
itself upon the roof of the temple, in the fire 
of the concentrated rays of the sun, as they 
are reflected from the golden shield. No 
sooner is it consumed to ashes than an egg 
appears in the funeral pyre, which the heat 
that consumed the bird warms immediately 
into life; and out of it the same phoenix comes 
forth in full plumage, spreads its wings, and 
flies away, to return again in 650 years. How 
beautiful! Yet we are told that it is nothing 
more than the transit of Mercury across the 
disk of the sun, and that the fabulous bird, 
the phoenix, is only an emblem of Mercury, 
as Osiris is of the sun. 

In the Egyptian schools of art, architecture 
claims the first place. The pyramid was the 
first form of Egyptian art, and modifications 
of this in truncated pyramids are seen in the 
main outlines of all later edifices. As to the 
pyramids themselves, it is doubtful as to 
whether they were built by the Egyptians or 
not, as the Egyptians claim that the two great 
pyramids were the work of giants who lived 
before the flood. But the pyramids are now , 
and have ever been, shrouded in darkness— 
mystery; yet out of these misty shadows many 
brilliant traditions have sprung. Noah him- 

63 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

self, say the sacred scrolls of the temples, was 
entombed in the pyramid Cleops, which is an¬ 
other name for Noah. Here this mighty 
monarch of two worlds, before and after the 
deluge, reposed in calm majesty in his colossal 
mummy case, which was covered with plates 
of gold. Upon his head was a crown of olive 
leaves, each leaf an emerald, and upon his 
breast a white dove made of a single pearl. 
Here for thousands of years reposed the fa¬ 
ther of the world, guarded only by a pure- 
white dove, which seemed sufficient to awe into 
reverence any who would fain have committed 
sacrilege. A strange immobility, due to the 
influence of religion, attached itself at an 
early period to Egyptian art. The artist, in 
the portrayal of the figures of the gods, was 
not allowed to change a single line in the 
conventional form; hence, the impossibility of 
improvement in sacred sculpture. Plato com¬ 
plained that the pictures and statues in the 
temples in his day were no better than they 
were ten thousand years before. Though not 
especially artistic, the Egyptian obelisk and 
colossal statues, always hewn from a single 
stone, will ever excite wonder and admiration. 
Great mechanical skill must have been needed 
to elevate such colossal figures to their proper 
position. We read that Mitres, fearing that 
the engineer would not use sufficient care in 
64 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

raising a certain obelisk, bound the prince, his 
son, to the apex, while it lay on the ground, 
and thus effectually guaranteed the safety of 
his monument. But amid all the ruins of 
Egypt, there is nothing more impressive, so 
say the travelers, than the two statues of 
Memnon at Thebes, each 47 feet high, and 
hewn from a single block of granite. There 
they sit together t yet apart, serene and vigi¬ 
lant, still keeping their untired watch over 
the lapse of ages and the departed glory of 
Egypt—the vocal Memnon ever emitting, in 
low, musical tones, his greeting to the rising 
sun. Yet after all our researches, what can 
we ever know of Egypt, the land of the 
shining river, whose fountainhead is under¬ 
neath the throne of Thoth, far in the southern 
sky, even though we now possess the “Rosetta 
stone,” the key which has opened the vast 
libraries of Egyptian literature and given to 
us the Ritual, or Book of the Dead, a sort of 
guide to the soul in its journey through the 
underworld; given us romance and fairy tales, 
among which is “Cinderella and the Glass 
Slipper”; given us autographs, letters, fables, 
epics, and other treasures amply sufficient to 
justify the declaration of the Egyptian priest 
to Solon: “You Greeks are mere children, 
talkative and vain. You know nothing at all 
of the past!” And neither do we. 

65 


DRAWING. 


Drawing fills so high a place in the school 
curriculum that it would be a fruitless task to 
attempt to tell its worth. 

But to begin with the lowest primary. We 
wish to present to the little tots some catchy 
jingle, or memory gem. 

We sketch, for instance, a festive rabbit—■ 
matters not how crude. It appeals at once to 
the eye. The attention is fixed, and each eager 
face plainly says: We want to know some¬ 
thing about that rabbit. And when we lift the 
pointer and begin: 

“In the nighttime, 

At the right time, 

So I’ve understood, 

’Tis the habit of Sir Rabbit 
To dance in the wood.” 

My, what bright faces confront us, what 
eager attention, and, after a few repetitions f 
the majority of the class have memorised the 
lines, whereas, without having first presented 
the portrait of “Brer Rabbit,” our best efforts 
to catch and stay the attention would per- 
66 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


chance have proved a failure. But a few 
strokes of the crayon have done the work. 
Each little manikin has become a veritable 
wood nymph, and has in fancy been trans¬ 
ported to the depths of the dark forest, where 
in great glee he joins “Sir Rabbit” in his mid¬ 
night terpsichorean. 

I once required a class—as a language les¬ 
son—to describe his desk mate, urging a strict 
observance of the “Golden Rule” and insist¬ 
ing that no reference should be made to red 
hair, a pug nose, or any such unfortunate 
heritage to which the luckless desk mate may 
have chanced to fall heir. The previous day, 
with no thought of the coming language les¬ 
son, I had placed on the board a typical 
“Brownie.” Later, on looking over the papers, 
I found this: “Oscar has brown hair and blue 
eyes. He wears shoes without any stockings. 
He looks like the boy on the board—only he 
ain’t as pretty.” Now this quaint, yet inof¬ 
fensive, humor was drawn out by the rude 
little sketch on the board, which had served 
the double purpose of teaching the boy to 
make a comparison and draw a conclusion. 

On another occasion, I drew, with no other 
purpose than to please my grown-up pupils, 
a full moon, with fleecy, white clouds floating 
over the surface. Just as I gave the last hur¬ 
ried stroke, I heard a chorus of voices saying: 

67 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


“Oh, Miss Mayes, the moon is full of little 
chickens!” I stepped back, and unhesitatingly 
admit that, in this particular production, dis¬ 
tance did indeed greatly lend enchantment to 
the view. For, sure enough, there were the 
little white chickens in all their fluffy beauty. 
And it was only necessary to furnish each 
with a little dot for an eye to transform him 
into a much finer specimen of the chicken 
kind than I could ever have produced had my 
purpose been to draw chickens instead of a 
herd of Apollo's cattle. But the chief ad¬ 
vantage in this instance was its serving to de¬ 
velop the power of observation on the part of 
the class. 

History, geography, physiology, and many 
other studies are made far more attractive and 
efficacious by the free use of crayon. Here is 
a product map done by one of my Texas 
pupils. It may serve as a suggestion to some 
one who has never tried this class of work. 
For Thanksgiving and memorial days noth¬ 
ing is more attractive than sketches in colored 
crayon. Gorgeous fruit and flowers, a mam¬ 
moth yellow pumpkin with green foliage, and, 
last but not least , the traditional hatchet and 
cherry tree, the latter laden with enormous red 
fruit—all render effectual service in trans¬ 
forming the unattractive blackboard into a 
thing of beauty. At least, so say our enthusi- 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


astic pupils. And we can always feel assured 
that in them, if from no other source, we will 
find perfect praise. 

So much for drawing as an effectual instru¬ 
ment in the hand of the teacher through 
which the pupil is indirectly benefited. But 
its most potent worth —in school work proper 
—is, of course, the advantages it offers the 
child itself; training, as it does, the eye as well 
as the hand, it serves to develop the faculty 
of seeing as well as doing. 

Drawing, too, develops the mechanical gen¬ 
ius of the child, than which, in this commercial 
age, nothing can be of greater commercial 
value. It gives skill to the hand of the 
draughtsman, and fits the coming artisan for 
his lucrative profession. Hence it should in 
every way be encouraged in our public schools. 
For “to be or not to be” an artist is the ques¬ 
tion. An artist in the broad sense —an artist 
in the commercial world as well as in the 
world of art. 

For years, in the Dallas city schools, we 
taught a very fine system of “free-hand draw¬ 
ing,” and it was interesting beyond compare 
to note with what delicate finish a study would 
often be reproduced. And from sources from 
which we would least expect artistic skill. 

And it is only through the medium of the 
public school that the masses can ever know 
69 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


as to whether or not there lurks the little art 
germ in their make-up, as the most power¬ 
ful X-ray, and the late-born, rare, and radiant 
radium, have thus far failed to reveal their 
presence. Yet the most unpromising urchin of 
our public schools may possess rare possibili¬ 
ties. And who can say but what this same 
public school may not, in coming years, be the 
proud alma mater of a Raphael or an Angelo ? 


SOMETHING ABOUT SPELLING. 


Again and again we hear the inquiry, 
What method do you use in teaching certain 
branches? And what is method? Method is 
only a means to an end—nothing more. True, 
much has been gained for the child through 
the study of modern methods; but even here 
there is a possibility of harm. When a child 
has been taught to read at home by the old- 
fashioned spelling method, must he begin in 
the lowest primary because he doesn’t under¬ 
stand phonics? I think not, as you and I do 
not make change by the “Gruby system,” nor 
do we read the morning paper by the phonetic. 

In spelling, as in every other subject, what 
the teacher must aim at is knowledge and 
growth. Yet there is something radically and 
fatally wrong with a teacher who has no edu¬ 
cational creed. Education is a responsible and 
complicated work, and there must be some 
definite aim, some clear understanding of the 
ways and means of reaching that end; so the 
educator must have some fixed principles, for 
without them every fad that stirs up a breeze 
may turn him from his course. 

This is especially true in teaching spelling; 


> BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

but after long years of experience we may 
eventually get hold of the best teaching proc¬ 
ess or method. True, our system may not be 
based on Pestalozzi’s discoveries, but it must 
be based on common sense. 

For a time we heard nothing but phonics, 
until the teacher who was not well up on this 
orthographic fad was positively afraid to ap¬ 
pear in an assembly of teachers in which the 
champions of phonics predominated lest his 
deficiency in this particular line might be de¬ 
tected through his enunciation, or even from 
some peculiar formation of the external ear. 
But time wore on; statistics proved this 
method to have been “weighed in the balance 
and found wanting.” “Old faithful,” the 
common-sense teacher, again lifts his head. 
After this same style, bubble after bubble 
arose, culminated, and busted, until at last, 
out of the “common-sense ranks,” there arose 
a few with an uncommonly large stock of this 
commodity, who raised their banner in defense 
of the visual image and assigned the auditory 
a secondary place. Here, methinks, they 
struck “rock bottom,” and here the common- 
sense teacher feels assured that he has at least 
discovered a modicum of truth, which, by 
prayer and fasting and indefatigable efforts, 
he may hope, in time, to make a reasonably 
good speller of any child who has a pair of 
> 72 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 

moderately good eyes, irrespective of color, 
race, or previous condition. But to accom¬ 
plish this means work. In the first place, 
great care must be taken to get the correct 
form from the printed page. Teach the child 
to see. In a great many words there is some 
critical letter or syllable on which hinges the 
correct spelling of the word. Take the word 
separate, for instance—a, in the second syl¬ 
lable, is all that is likely to cause trouble. In¬ 
sist on each pupil getting a good mental im¬ 
age of the word, then have him write and 
rewrite it on the board, thus making the hand 
and eye co-workers in educating the brain. 
Again, have him use this same word in a sen¬ 
tence, or even in a language lesson, until he 
has made the word his very own and has thus 
far enriched his vocabulary. 

The object lesson, too, may be brought in 
here with great efficacy. When a new word is 
introduced into a lesson, try, as far as possible, 
to place the object itself before the child. A 
few days ago the word “rosary” occurred in 
the spelling lesson. Most of the pupils had 
no conception whatever of the meaning of the 
word, and, consequently, would not have been 
likely to have retained the spelling. But one 
bright little girl knew, and offered to bring 
a rosary, which she had found, and let the 
class see it. The mystic symbol was accord- 
73 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


ingly displayed, and the meaning of the word, 
together with the spelling, was forever fixed 
on the mind of each member of the class. 

Had some kind parent or teacher, by means 
of an object lesson, or otherwise, bestowed 
some little care on a certain small boy, never 
would “Jonathan, the noble friend of the 
sweet singer of Israel,” have been degraded 
into “Johnnie Than.” 

Never would that indispensable toilet arti¬ 
cle, known as the emblem of refinement 
throughout the civilized world, been pro¬ 
nounced “so-ap” by “Little Boy Blue” had he 
been shown even a bar of good, substantial 
“laundry soap” when first he began to blow 
his literary horn. 

Had a little more teaching force been ex¬ 
pended on Margarite, Lucy would not have 
been urged to double up and see the sun rise. 

Some overzealous pedagogue has lately ad¬ 
vanced the idea of introducing art into the 
spelling exercises—“illustrated spelling,” as he 
terms it; but this seems a little far-fetched. 
Fancy a pupil making a drawing, even never 
so crude, of 40 or 50 words. The very idea 
is ludicrous in the extreme. We had as well 
go back to hieroglyphics and be done with it. 

Another, with better claims for support, 
suggests that the child be made to think of 
words as though they possessed faces. This 
74 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


would no doubt be very helpful, as it is neces¬ 
sary to have the same vivid mental conception 
of the word that one has of faces in order 
to make it live on the printed page. That is, 
each word must come to have a certain 
sparkling, clear-cut impressive personality, so 
that not a letter could be changed or omitted 
without that fact being instantly recognized. 
In short, the child would soon learn to object 
to a two-faced word as much as he would to 
a two-faced friend, and would insist on each 
word with which he is acquainted preserving 
its own individuality. 

And correct spelling would not fill him with 
wonder, as it did Lowell’s fisherman friend, 
who had noticed that the most striking pe¬ 
culiarity of the great author was that he al¬ 
ways spelled his words the same way. 


75 



THE CIVIC VALUE OF BIRDS. 


“Gay, guiltless pair, 

What seek ye from the fields of heaven? 

Ye have no need of prayer, 

Ye have no sins to be forgiven. 

“Why perch ye here, 

Where mortals to their Maker bend? 

Can your pure spirits fear 

The God ye never could offend ?” 

How happily the poet catches the true mis¬ 
sion of the bird! No suppliant must he needs 
be; no sin-stained soul, no atonement. But 
his is a life of praise, and in his ecstasy of 
joy he pours forth his glad song to the trees, 
the sky, and the sunshine, each of which is 
but a reflection of his Maker, whom he in¬ 
stinctively adores. 

In all God’s plans for beauty and utility, 
man seems to be preeminently his first consid¬ 
eration. So, on the eve of the sixth day, the 
notable day on which man makes his advent 
as the ruler of the universe, God created birds. 
“Every winged fowl after his kind. And God 
saw that it was good. And there was even- 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


ing and there was morning the fifth day.” 

Yes, ’twas good. Good that man, as he 
rises in all his perfection of beauty from his 
native element, the dust of the ground, and 
stands before his Maker in possession of a full 
appreciation of his new surroundings, that the 
first sounds that should strike upon the newly 
attuned ear should be the thrilling notes of the 
bird’s song. For what other music could so 
effectually have attuned his soul to that of his 
God’s ? The eye, too, as it begins to feast on 
the unsurpassed beauty of “Eden’s Garden,” 
catches here and there a glimpse of dazzling 
plumage, which equals, if it does not surpass, 
in brilliancy of hue that of the flowers in all 
their wealth of beauty. And no doubt to his 
unaccustomed eye these brilliant denizens of 
the forest seem, in very truth, vitalized and 
vocalized flowers. For, oh! how strange and 
new must have been the surroundings of this 
lone man, so fresh from the hands of the 
Creator! 

Perchance from a recent shower the trees 
were brilliantly studded with diamonds, which 
twinkled and glittered uneasily as the wind 
gently swayed the boughs. But the trills ran 
on; Adam listened in wonder. “And the dia¬ 
monds were very quiet.” Still another sound 
was heard, “a pure, strong note, a beautiful 
sound note that made one think of gold and 
77 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


silver bells.” And the awful tension of the 
dazed man relaxed. In all this glad world of 
music there is a minor note, and the soul 
reaches out for something, it knows not what. 
But there is One who does know; knows, too, 
that there is to be a later creation that holds 
for man a glad surprise. 

A delightful drowsiness steals over the 
frame. A vision infinitely fair hovers over 
him. And the dreamer sinks into sleep pro¬ 
found, while a rib is being uniquely fashioned 
into a “Thing of beauty—a joy forever.” 
And Adam awakens to receive, as a helpmate, 
the entrancing vision gloriously materialized. 

And was there ever so glad a wedding day, 
when God himself officiated as priest at the 
hymeneal altar, and the deft fingers of Dame 
Nature arranged in artistic beauty the floral 
decorations, while the merry notes of the bird 
songs served as marriage bells? And with 
Eve, his pretty bride, Adam steps forth with 
a new light in his eye and a new song in his 
heart, knowing as assuredly then, as did later 
his gifted son, Longfellow, that 

“As unto the bow the cord is, 

So unto the man is woman.” 

And the birds sang on, as if endeavoring 
to tell to each succeeding generation of this 
78 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


glorious first wedding on the banks of the 
Euphrates. And the songs that were sung 
there they are singing to-day to you and to me. 

In a sunny room hangs a gilded cage. The 
happy little prisoner is a canary bird, known 
as “Dick,” and a very decided character is he. 
You approach his barred castle, expecting to 
see the diminutive lord flee to the opposite 
wall. But, no, not he. With outspread wings 
and extended beak he flies furiously to meet 
you, and aims many a vicious thrust through 
the gilded bars. But stand your ground. 
Prove to “Dick” that you are a friend, not a 
foe. Open the door of the cage, offer a 
friendly finger as a perch, and his lordship 
hops nimbly out, poises for a second to plume 
himself, then with agile grace complacently 
settles on the crown of your head, where he 
scratches away most diligently, making him¬ 
self perfectly at home, while you read or en¬ 
tertain a visiting friend. All goes well until a 
finger and thumb are raised in a menacing way, 
when the now placid nature is changed to one 
of fury. It is resented as a deadly challenge, 
and such fluttering of wings and tearing of 
hair as is now indulged in by this silly little 
tuft of yellow feathers would do credit to any 
son of Adam, who, while the thermometer 
stands at 98 degrees in the shade, finds every 
other button off his Sunday shirt. And would 
79 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


equal, if not surpass, the wrath of the “Meek 
Man” when the “Tablets of Stone” are broken 
at the foot of Sinai. Yet when this dimuni- 
tive feathered creature, with its dual nature, 
again bursts forth in glad song—now quaver¬ 
ing soft and low, now trilling like a prima 
donna in the high C’s, to sink again in the 
scale, where there is a “minor in the music”—< 
no nature, however materialistic, could fail to 
become more ethereal under its civic influence. 
But with all due appreciations of this brilliant 
little foreigner we must not lose sight of the 
fact that our own home bird, the mocking 
bird, is exerting a refining influence over man¬ 
kind equally as far-reaching. 

But time and space forbid a deeper enter- 
ence into the category of the feathered song¬ 
sters. While the aesthetic and ethical side of 
bird nature holds for us a fascination from 
which it is hard to turn, still we must not for¬ 
get the utility or commercial value of the little 
songsters. For what does the text say? “Civic 
value.” Then, have we gone astray? We 
trust not, for there is a civic value in the 
bird’s song far too subtle for our grasp. So 
we will tenderly leave it to the poet’s ethereal 
pen, while we pay our tribute to the barnyard 
fowls. But here at the very offset we are 
confronted by obligations so overwhelming as 
to scarcely know where to begin. For had 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


that awakening sound, like the dim foreboding 
of the coming blast of “Gabriers trumpet’' 
failed to arise from the barnyard just as Au¬ 
rora lifted the misty veil of night, would that 
priest “All shaven and shorn” ever have awak¬ 
ened to “Marry the man all tattered and torn” 
to that sweet little “Maiden all forlorn” ? We 
trow not. 

And Henepennie, while evidently possessing 
no conscious deficiency as a vocalist, and 
would unhesitatingly enter as a contestant 
against the nightingaale in the rendition of her 
favorite air, still it would require no con- 
noiseur to decide as to which of the two the 
prize should be awarded. At the same time, 
the sterling worth of the two birds to mankind 
is equally out of proportion. And the former, 
by her daily contribution to his gastronomical 
demands, has lifted numbers infinitely great 
from the root-eating period of their existence 
who have never once come under the soul- 
inspiring influence of the nightingale’s song. 

And what would Thanksgiving be without 
the turkey, the king of birds? Yet, shame to 
tell, while he occupies the seat of honor at 
the festive board, his tender breast must needs 
be subjected to the ruthless ravages of the 
carving-knife. 

And so we might, in descending the scale, 
enumerate the demands of carnivorous man on 
81 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


the feathered tribe, from this lordly turkey 
down to quail oil toast. 

But now, for a time, let us follow Honora¬ 
ble J. H. Wallace as he wanders over primi¬ 
tive America, “the idealistic sportsman’s para¬ 
dise,” and recounts the wholesale slaughter of 
the game bird by “primeval Nimrods.” 

While hunting has ever held for man an 
incomparable infatuation, and has been alike 
the sport of savage peasant and king, yet a 
momentary contemplation on the threatened 
annihilation of the feathered tribe will be suf¬ 
ficient to induce this intelligent body of peda¬ 
gogues to throw themselves in line with the 
“bird champions” of the day, now awake to 
the fact that there is an imperative demand 
for prompt and decisive protective legislation. 
And at the clarion’s call our ranks will from 
day to day be reenforced by the happy hus¬ 
bandman who comes to learn as to how the 
robin and field lark, as insect and weed de¬ 
stroyers, do invaluable yet gratuitous service 
for the planter. Learn, too, how the dread 
Mexican boll-weevil can be as effectually oblit¬ 
erated by our insectivorous birds as were the 
“plagues of Egypt” at Jehovah’s stern com¬ 
mand. And yet more: Learn as to how “the 
crop of a single Tennessee dove contained 
over 7,000,000 weed seed.” (And we fancy 
that of the Louisiana dove is equally capa- 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


cious.) And how on “each feeding day sucli 
a dove would destroy more prospective weeds 
than two wage hands at $1.50 per day would 
uproot in double the time, thus proving her¬ 
self to be the cheapest and most efficient hoe 
hand the planter can secure.” He would 
learn, too, of how, as an insect destroyer, the 
bull-bat is equally serviceable. And no doubt 
at mention of this long-forgotten feathered 
friend memory’s pendulum swings back to the 
days of his childhood, when at “evening time 
in the pasture land,” the bull bat swooped 
down with his well-remembered “Oom/” caus¬ 
ing the startled urchin to cover with berry- 
stained fingers his unprotected head. Yet, lit¬ 
tle did the urchin dream that at each consecu¬ 
tive swoop there was at least one malaria¬ 
spreading mosquito less, and with its extermi¬ 
nation one chance less for the dread ague to 
seize his quaking little bones. How we love 
our feathered allies. And how we would like 
to expatiate on the merits of bob-white, the 
red-winged blackbird, and, last but not least, 
the mocking bird—not as a songster, but for 
his intrinsic worth to man. 

The “civic value” of the vulture tribe, use¬ 
ful, though not ornamental, we will not at¬ 
tempt to discuss, but will say in gratitude: 
They are a “peculiar people, zealous of good 
works.” 


83 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


And we will defy any one to “up and say” 
that the feather bed has not played an impor¬ 
tant part in the civilization of the human race. 
For by this gift the goose had rendered most 
effectual service to mankind long before her 
immortal cackling saved Rome. 

And what tribute can we render the eagle? 
—the glorious bird of our country—while 
with unflinching eye he gazes on the dazzling 
brilliancy of the sun. Yet, like the true Amer¬ 
ican he is, he never fails to keep an eye on 
his own personal interest; and has succeeded 
in having himself lithographed on our “Na¬ 
tional Standard”; succeeded in identifying 
himself with “Uncle Sam” and the “Glorious 
Fourth”; succeded in having his noble form, 
with outspread wings, engraven on the silver 
trade dollar. And even now, in Mount Ver¬ 
non cemetery, with gilded wings, he hovers 
like a benediction over the sarcophagus of our 
noble Washington. 

Yet, after all this self-aggrandizement, who 
can say that this noble bird has not had an 
eye single to the welfare of the great Amer¬ 
ican nation for which he to-day stands “the 
proud emblem”? 

But with all due respect to the “eagle bird” 
and his soaring propensities, in the next great 
“American revolution” we shall unanimously 
vote to eliminate his winged form from the 
84 


BREEZES FROM THE SOUTHLAND 


aforesaid silver dollar, and adopt instead the 
anatomy of the tortoise, or some other slow- 
going quadruped, in hopes of giving this 
otherwise highly esteemed medium of trade 
better staying qualities. 

But back to the text again —“Civic Value” 
—the value of birds to man. What a volumi¬ 
nous subject! How far-reaching! Could we 
gird the earth from east to west, from pole 
to pole, at each successive step we would 
gather some revelation so. new and startling 
as to awaken in man a fuller appreciation of 
his feathered coadjutors, a fuller appreciation 
of their brilliant plumage, a fuller appreciation 
of their agricultural value; but, above all, a 
fuller and deeper appreciation of their “sweet 
songs, redolent with liquid melody.” For as 
the bird song was the first music to greet the 
ear of man, ’twill no doubt be the last to 
charm him on earth as he passes through the 
different “gradations of glory, from the pale 
human soul” to that of the radiant being who 
is now “satisfied,” having “awakened in His 
likeness and joined the ‘Choir Invisible.’ ” 





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